What Car Is This? It's A Briscoe!
It's A Briscoe
Mystery solved! This car was featured in
Still Runnin Magazine’s premier issue for our readers to help identify it. Twenty four hours later, Al Liebmann contacted us with the answer:
“It’s a Briscoe” Al said, “They were built from 1914-1921 in Jackson, MI and debuted at the 1914 New York Auto Show. The Cyclops headlight was a marvelous feature, but unfortunately it was illegal in most states to have only one headlight.” And likely is the reason the one in our photo has the huge cowl lights.
Photos by Al Liebmann
Al, thank you for the photographs along with identifying the car for us! With the answer in hand, SR did a little research on “Grandma’s Car”:
The Briscoe
Automobile pioneer and industrialist, Benjamin Briscoe was born in Detroit, Michigan in May of 1876. At the age of 18 Benjamin Briscoe entered business for himself with a capital of $472.00 organizing “Benjamin Briscoe & Co.” to manufacture sheet metal stamping, which later became part of American Can Company. Briscoe went on to invent a machine for the production of corrugated pipe for the Briscoe and Detroit Galvanizing Works, later known as the Briscoe Manufacturing Company.
Briscoe help finance David Buick’s first car, during the time the auto industry was in infancy in 1901. Later he became the president of the Maxwell-Briscoe Motor Company that manufactured the Maxwell automobile. It is said to be the greatest success in the industry. The company was backed by JP Morgan & Co. and Richard Irvin & Co. But in 1907, Briscoe had the first of many bad experiences with bankers and was forced to do his own financing. Benjamin Briscoe had the notion to consolidate the four largest automobile manufacturers: Ford Motor Company, Buick, Oldsmobile and Maxwell- Briscoe into one company. But his negotiations with W. Durant, H. Ford and R.E. Olds failed, so he proceeded to organize his own corporation which resulted in to be the United States Motor Company.
US Motors continued to produce the Maxwell and soon was producing the Stoddard-Dayton car, the Brush Runabout, (which brother Frank Briscoe was a principal), Alden- Sampson trucks and others. He bought up such concerns as the Columbia Motor Car Co, owner of many patents, including the Selden patent. Briscoe had an option on the Cadillac car at one time, but never exercised it and it eventually went to Mr. Durant, who had organized the General Motors Corp.
Moving forward to 1910, bankers invested $6,000 in US Motors, but the financing proved inadequate and the firm went into receivership in 1912. Briscoe was forced out and Walter Flanders took over and reorganized assets as Maxwell Motor Co., Inc., later reorganized as the Chrysler Corporation.
Briscoe left US Motors a few months later and he and his brother formed Briscoe Freres at Billancourt, France, home of the Renault, to design and build a car on the continent according to American methods. The result was the Ajax. A year later the brothers bought out the Briscoe car in America manufactured at Jackson, Michigan, which they promoted as the first French-designed American car. When the war broke out, (WW1) Benjamin turned his manufacturing facilities over to war production and he never returned to the automobile business. His partners continued to manufacture Briscoe models until 1923.
Benjamin Briscoe was quite an entrepreneur, Briscoe dabbled in many things after the war and later retired to a 3,000 acre plantation in Marion County, Florida around 1940. Mr. Briscoe died in 1945 at the age of 78.